swallowed in the sea
by that dark-haired girl
Summary: Gale, and grief, on assignment in District Four.


A/N: Trigger warnings abound for self-harm and PTSD.

* * *

There was a string of girls when he first made the move to District Two: brunettes, mostly, some who kept their hair in braids, some without. He can pretend he knows the hair, but not the soft eyes, not the coy smiles, not the meaningless chatter they strike up in bars, the easy banter that he can never quite replicate.

It's good company, for what it is, but the memory of Katniss lingers too close for comfort: Gale can't look at these women, not directly, not when Catnip still tracks him through his dreams, bow in hand, arrow notched to fire. She was always quieter than him when they went out into the woods, her hands steadier, eyes sharper. He was better at snares, at laying traps and clever tricks, but she was always a better hunter than him.

When the hurricane hits, getting sent to District Four to manage the recovery seems like a blessing, a change of pace from rebuilding infrastructure and political promises he's not sure they can keep. Gale packs up his government-issued apartment and is on a train by the end of the week. There is no one he cares enough to say goodbye to.

**…**

There isn't much that can be done in Four, not really; the tide has receded, there were only a handful of casualties. It's a different sort of damage: Gale still thinks of devastation as something manmade, calculated, bombs and fire and burning buildings, Twelve and Thirteen and the Capitol up in smoke. In Four, the streets are strewn with roof tiles and downed trees, fishing boats half-sunk into sandbars, decomposing algae blooms sprawled across the coastline. The bodies have already been buried by the time Gale's train arrives at the station.

It's Mrs. Everdeen who meets him, stepping from the early morning fog like a ghost.

"It's good to see you," she says, and Gale wishes he could say the same. Gale remembers the years between the mine collapse and the last Games: all the blank empty nothing in the Everdeen house, Katniss raging in the woods at her mother's silence, her indifference. But he remembers later, too, herbal remedies and bottles of morphling, her cool hands on the bloody lash wounds across his back. He wishes he could forget it.

They sent her, he thinks, not because of their history, but because she's like him – an expat, an outsider, another one from District Twelve coming out of the postwar migration into unfamiliar territory. Mrs. Everdeen doesn't move to hug him, or even shake his hand, just watches him with an expectant look that reminds him, uncannily, of Prim. Gale lifts his suitcase and follows her out of the fog, through the main square to the Justice Building.

"It's good to be here," he tells her. It isn't quite a lie.

**…**

They've put him up at an Inn near what used to be the Victor's Village, the kind of place Capitolians might have vacationed at before the war: soft beds and nice views, a long stretch of private beach that most of the District still refuses to set foot on.

Gale has never seen the ocean before; it's a different sort of wildness than the woods he's used to, and Gale picks his way through the driftwood scattered across the cold sand of the beach, his tie loose, his shoes in his hand. The sun is setting on his first full day in Four and it could have been better, but it could have been worse; there are worse things than signing his name to paperwork he doesn't care about, sitting in on meetings as Paylor's representative to the people of Panem.

Gale stops and stretches when he's out of sight from the Inn, and when he looks up at the night sky overhead there is a canopy of unfamiliar stars fading into view. He's too far away to hear the noise from the village; there's just the cries of gulls circling the docks, the far-off sound of bells clanging on the fishing boats as they make their way back to shore. There is just the sound of the waves: water rising and receding, foam and spray against the sand.

And then, in the distance, a long, high, anguished wail. Gale turns from the water toward the Victor's Village, the white clapboard houses lined up neatly along the beach, and the lights are on in only one. There is only one Victor left in Four, he remembers, and a cold wind cuts right through him at the thought.

**…**

Here are the things Gale Hawthorne knows about Annie Cresta:

She stands an even five feet tall, and her hair is a long dark auburn, wild and wavy as it tumbles, unkempt, over her shoulders to her waist. She buys lemons and oranges when he catches sight of her at the market, leafy greens and eggs and District bread: salty, dark-grained rolls cut with seaweed, shaped like fish. Her eyes are maybe the greenest he's ever seen. She was beautiful before her Games; Gale only vaguely remembers the year she won, but he was watching with the rest of the nation as the Gamemakers flooded her arena, he can still remember Annie rising like a mermaid through the water, tossing her hair back as she broke through the choppy waves at the surface.

She is still beautiful, but it's different: there is a skittishness that was not there before her Games, before the torture in the Capitol and the claustrophobic nightmare of District Thirteen. Annie is – was – _is_ a broken woman, mending but still fragile at the seams, with a frenetic, nervous energy around her that makes him think of storms breaking over the mountains, horses going wild in their pens.

They didn't talk in Thirteen, what reason did they have to? She was Finnick's heart, the same way Katniss was his, there was nothing else between them that needed to be said. He sees her sometimes walking with her baby wrapped at her chest, Mrs. Everdeen at her side, along the sidewalks in the town proper, the cobblestone road that circles the Victor's Village, the footpaths that lead to the waterfront. Gale watches her from a distance and thinks of her in the torture chamber under the Training Center, the way she looked at him when Boggs lifted her from the floor of her cell; she was so still and silent that at first he thought she was dead, that they would be bringing back to Finnick his lover's body to bury. And then she looked at him, her hair a rat's nest of tangles, her eyes huge in her hollowed face, and between Peeta's moans of pain and Johanna's snappish taunts, the sad, level gaze Annie had cast on him seemed to say, _here or there, it doesn't matter – it's all one more bloody thing after another._

He wonders, for a moment, if she regrets being saved. He cannot say the same for himself.

**…**

He tries to write to Katniss one night. His letter comes in fits and starts, smudged ink, terrible penmanship. Madge Undersee used to tease him about his handwriting, once upon a time, little flirtatious digs that made the corners of Katniss's mouth turn up in a way he could never quite interpret. Gale's hands shake as he churns out page after page of apologies and accusations, a product of too much caffeine and too little sleep, his guilt bleeding out over the crumpled hotel paper:

_I'm sorry –_

_I miss –_

_I love you –_

_I never meant to hurt –_

_Why wasn't I enough for –_

Gale tears it up when he's finished, rips it into smaller and smaller pieces and thrusts it into the roaring fireplace in his room. The edges of the paper curl up as they burn into ash, white and then dark and then crumbling into nothing. A part of him expects relief at the action, maybe a moment's peace, but no: his heart still aches and now his hand hurts, too. All he seems to do these days is lose.

When he finally sleeps that night it is full of nightmares, cinders falling on his head like it did in the Capitol, in Twelve, all the bodies around him stirring back to life: Madge and the Mellarks and the Peacekeepers, the coal miners, bloody children in Capitol finery surrounding him until he falls backward onto pavement, the whole crowd of them surging forward, stuffing their ashes in his mouth.

He wakes up choking, and coughs and coughs and coughs in the early morning light until he thinks he might bring up blood.

**…**

He sees Annie on the beach the next time he walks past the old boundary by the Victor's Village; she's alone this time, her son in her arms, her hip pressed into the railing of the back steps as she stares out at the horizon line. The wind lifts her hair back from her neck and it billows out around her like she has been plunged into water. It takes a moment before she sees him, and when she finally catches his gaze Annie doesn't smile; she nods, just slightly, toward the house and when she walks inside, Gale follows.

Annie named the baby Noah, she tells him, the two of them alone in the kitchen of her big white house; Noah, like the man in the old stories, the ones mothers in Four tell their children, who built a boat big enough to hold his entire District and saved all the animals from a terrible rising flood. Her labor was long and painful, the baby was blue and silent when Mrs. Everdeen finally gave him to her, and in the moment before he opened his mouth and _screamed_ Annie's heart clenched hard in her chest, terrified that Finnick's son was dead, too, that last tether between them cut and lost forever.

The mug of tea she put in front of Gale has cooled, the light outside the window dimmed. It is surreal to be sitting here before her like they are two old friends, her son falling asleep in her lap, catching up on all they've missed since they both left District Thirteen. He needs to leave, needs to get back to the hotel – away from this honesty, this kindness, just away, away, _away_ – but can't bring himself to move.

"She was laughing and crying," Annie says, telling him how Mrs. Everdeen cut the umbilical cord for her, combed careful fingers through Annie's sweaty hair. Annie holds her son up to her chest and tells Gale how it felt to hold him in those first few minutes, tiny and new and squirming in her arms, how she was dizzy from the pain, the love, _relief_.

"It was all things," she says, "All of it, everything, all at once. It felt like _winning_, you know? It felt like how winning is supposed to feel."

Gale nods, a sudden lump in his throat, and makes an excuse to leave.

**…**

"You could come home when this is over," his mother says, her voice tinny and distant through the receiver of the phone in his hotel room. "The boys miss you, and Posy has at least a dozen new drawings of her big brother, the President's Man."

Gale laughs at her words but still feels the sting. His mother knows better than anyone why he doesn't dare return to District Twelve; primroses are blooming freely in the grass beyond Victor's Village, in the ruins of the Merchant section, a blanket of soft color over the coal dust of the Seam. His mother knows better than anyone that he cannot go back.

**…**

He comes back a few nights later, against his better judgement, and then the night after that, and the next, and the next, and the next. Annie seems to enjoy the company. He's surprised to say that he does, too.

There's a twilight hour where Annie is at her calmest, when she's silly and cheerful and charming, the closest she might ever be to who she was before her Games. In that twilight hour, it's easy enough for Gale to forget how quickly her sanity can slip away.

The first time he witnesses it there is no warning: she is clearing their plates from dinner in one minute, her hand pressing lightly on his shoulder as she passes his chair, the next she is crumpled under the kitchen table, the dishes shattered in pieces on the floor. Annie is twisted into a ball with her hands over her ears, her eyes shut tight, mouth open wide in a silent scream.

"Leave me _alone_," she whispers, pulling away when Gale drops to his knees and tries to follow her under the table, "Go _away_ – you're not real, you're not _real_ –"

Her words fail, stumbling out in an unintelligible rush; Annie spiraling quickly, caught in the undertow of nightmares and memories. Gale reaches forward as she draws her knees to her chest, moves slowly, carefully, remembering animals with their legs caught in traps: desperation, sharp teeth and claws. His hand brushes over Annie's bare shoulder and she rears back to fight him off, fingernails catching against his cheek in a sharp scratch. Annie scrambles out from under the table and picks up a shard of china as she goes, screaming loud enough to wake the dead – _to wake the baby_, Gale thinks suddenly, crawling out after her, but there's only silence from Noah's cradle in the next room. Annie shrieks and cries and the baby sleeps on soundly.

_"Cut him down, cut him down!"_ Annie moans, "They're hurt – the ropes – _cut him down!_"

Gale doesn't know what that means; Annie lunges forward, shard in hand, but Gale catches her before she can make contact, grasps her thin wrist in his hand until he breaks her hold, letting it fall to the floor with a clatter. He throws an arm around her waist, tries to yank her into his embrace, but Annie fights against him, sending an elbow hard into his stomach as she tries to get away. Gale catches her again, bending her arms behind her back, pulling her hard and close against his chest. Annie shakes in his arms, still struggling break free from his grip, but Gale only holds her tighter.

"Stop, Annie," he tells her, again and again, "Annie, please, _stop_."

The wind howls against the house, beats against the shutters, and Annie's screams eventually fade into sobs.

**…**

When she comes back to herself, Annie looks at him with glass-green eyes and says, "You stayed."

It isn't a question. They're both breathing hard and drenched in sweat, the kitchen an angry mess around them. Annie drags her fingers through her tangled hair and wipes her tear-stained face with the hem of her skirt. When Gale rubs the heel of his hand over his cheek where she scratched him, it comes back bloody.

"Where would I go?" he asks, and Annie's wrists are bruised.

**…**

He tells the archivist that it's research, something to do with reparations for the families of former tributes. He smiles and flirts and turns on the charm, and the archivist takes the bait, letting him into the Records Room right before the Justice Building shuts down for the night.

What else can be said about the 70th Hunger Games? The Arena, the blood, the pain, the triumph, it's a story that has all been told before. Gale remembers the ending but not the beginning, not the middle, and he needs to know what happened. He needs to know what they did to Annie Cresta before they set a crown upon her head.

The footage on the computer screen before him is as crisp and clear as memory; the boy from Ten lassos a noose around her District partner's neck, easy as any wayward calf, and it's a group of outliers that swarm on him, bring him down from the platform of the Cornucopia. Annie is in the background, held off by the boy from One, his knuckles white with the effort of keeping her from running forward, from following her partner to the same fate.

_"Cut him down,"_ Annie shrieks on the screen, her eyes big and wild, _"Cut him down, let him go, cut the rope, cut him down,"_ and Gale watches on the computer screen in this safe carrel desk, biting his knuckle, as the outlying tributes pull the rope over a tree branch, hoist her partner higher and higher until his neck snaps. It's not enough, it's not _enough_: his neck snaps but it doesn't break, he's still alive, he's _alive_, hanging and screaming and struggling, his legs kicking at his captors, his nails bloody where they claw at the rope. The girl from Five swings a sword and sends him crashing to the ground when it slices through the rope, and the boy from Seven casts a long shadow across the grass when he raises his axe and brings it down, again and again, to cut off her partner's head.

Annie howls in the video footage and it cuts right to the core of him; for a moment Gale is back at the fence at the edge of the District, bombs exploding in the air behind him, the path he led his people down strewn with bloody corpses.

For a moment, Gale knows exactly how she feels.

**…**

Annie's home is rarely empty; there are always people cycling in and out, bringing food, weeding in the garden, hanging clean, wet laundry on the clothesline outside. It reminds him of Twelve, the Seam, the way Fours bring toys and clothes for the baby, knitted blankets, milk and bread and honey for the house. Annie lets them hold her son, these friends and neighbors who coo and fuss over him, but there's an emptiness in her eyes that Gale can't ignore.

Mrs. Everdeen is, surprisingly, the only one she lights up for.

It's not one of Annie's better days; she's gone already – back in the Arena, Gale thinks when he first sees her, grey and flat and tired in her nightgown, imagining her Games on a loop on the inside of her eyelids. Mrs. Everdeen lets herself into the house after her shift at the hospital and finds them up in Annie's bedroom: Annie in bed with the baby on her lap, Gale slumped in a chair by the door. He straightens up when Mrs. Everdeen walks into the room, surprised by the casual familiarity with which she does it, how easily she opens the curtains of the window next to Annie's bed, how gently she sits on the end of the mattress. Mrs. Everdeen holds out her arms for the baby and Annie hands him over mechanically, eyes still staring blankly at the wall across from her.

"I dreamed Finnick was here," Annie says after a while, "He had Noah in his arms. Finnick was in my kitchen and he held him so tight, I thought –"

She stops herself, hands now worrying a loose thread on the quilt over her lap. Mrs. Everdeen nods as she rocks Noah in her arms, then strokes a fingertip over his soft, plump cheek.

"It felt real," Annie whispers, "It felt so _real_, I thought he was still here."

Mrs. Everdeen does not look at Gale, who feels like an outsider as he glances between the two of them. Mrs. Everdeen reaches out and pushes Annie's hair behind her ear, brushes her fingers as tenderly over Annie's skin as she did her son's. "I know it did," she tells her, quietly, gently, "I dreamed it, too."

Annie's face crumples and she covers it with her hands, shaking with the effort it takes to keep from crying. Mrs. Everdeen shushes her, and when Annie falls forward Mrs. Everdeen catches her, lets her rest her head in her lap like Annie is a child. Gale rises from the chair and Mrs. Everdeen acknowledges him with a grateful nod, giving him permission to leave.

"It gets easier," she says as he goes, stroking Annie's hair, but Gale can't believe her.

**…**

It's been three weeks since he left Two. Gale is exhausted and his hands itch for a bow, the shelter of green canopy instead of whitewashed walls and fluorescent lighting, a table scattered with empty coffee cups and stale, half-eaten pastries. It's suffocating him, trying to work through endless meetings and interviews; the constant press of people around him, _needing_ things, _expecting_ things from _him_, is enough to drive him mad, and in the brief moments of respite he gets Gale lets his mind slip back to quiet afternoons in the clearings within Twelve's woods, eyes following a deer's path from where he hides high in the blind, the sun warm on his face where it filters through the leaves.

There is no place like this in Four; too much water, the woods surrounding the District too thick and dark and damp to give him the peace he needs. He settles for the small park in front of the Justice Building when the last of his meetings let out, scattering the breadcrumbs from his last meal on the ground before him for the birds. They swoop in eagerly, finches and sparrows, swallows and crows, but when the mockingjays land at his feet Gale's throat goes uncomfortably tight, his breath caught in his chest.

There's a moment, an insane, terrible moment, where he considers drawing his gun from its holster and pulling the trigger; he can already feel it, the coil and release of the bullet in the chamber, the pressure and sound, the black and white feathers spattered with blood. He clenches his fist, crumbs sticking to his skin, and gathers stones from the gravel walkway, instead.

All of the birds take flight when the mockingjays flee, his heartbeat thumping in his ears amid the sound of ruffling feathers: _enough! enough! enough!_

**…**

It goes like this: there is dinner, there is wine, there is music on the little radio that Annie keeps in her kitchen. She is humming along and Gale stands and joins her, grasping her hand in his and leading her around the kitchen. It's a simple Twelve two-step, and Annie grins and giggles when he turns her once, twice, a third time, she crumples his shirt in her fist when she stumbles and loses her balance. Gale catches her on a laugh, hand at her waist, and remembers something his mother used to say: there's a dance for friends, and a dance for lovers.

The setting sun through the window has cast both their skin into gold, the red in Annie's hair lit up like winter fire. Gale stares at her a moment and leans down before he can stop himself, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek. Annie goes still under his touch, her whole body tense as he moves to kiss her mouth, her lips soft and unmoving under his. Annie pulls back, out from his hands, and sets herself on clearing the table; she gathers dishes and cups and won't look at him, not directly, crossing the room to set them in the sink.

The music fills the space between them and there is a gulf of awkward silence that was not there a moment ago. Annie washes silverware with her back to him, and Gale stands in the middle of her kitchen and does not know what he wants. Understanding? Forgiveness? Any other woman and he would try to bring her back to the moment that's broken between them, flirt and tease, compliment and charm. Any other woman and he would leave.

Annie is different.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Annie turns and looks up at him with wide, sad eyes.

"No, you're not," she says, and leaves it at that.

**…**

Annie is crying; Annie is crying; Annie is crying and Noah is screaming and the rain is pounding, pounding, pounding against the roof, and Gale runs up the stairs to find her, has to break down the locked bathroom door with his shoulder to get inside. The white tiled floor isn't white anymore; Annie is slumped on the floor against the bathtub, her eyes puffy and swollen, shiny with tears, a long, messy river of red dripping down her wrist to the floor.

"No," he says, he can't breathe, he can't _breathe_, "Annie, no – Annie, you _didn't_ –"

The razor blade is beside her, bloody and wet on the lip of the tub, staining the white porcelain. Annie's hair is wet, her skin, her clothes, all a wet, devastating mess, and there's so much blood, there's so much _blood –_

_There's blood on the path and blood in his hair and the sky is burning the sky is falling Twelve is in pieces the fence is in pieces and Posy is heavy in his arms and can the others keep up, can they keep running down the path, who fell behind who have they lost who's blood is this who's blood who's blood who's blood –_

_The bells on the silver parachutes ring and there is a moment where the sky is so blue it looks like it would crack and then it does, it does, the sky breaks and the world breaks and there's a hand a foot an elbow where a whole body was before and Katniss is screaming and Prim is dead Prim is in pieces there's the ducktail of her shirt there's the blonde hair he knows so well and Gale is on fire, he's on fire, his face is on fire his hands are on fire he feels like he's on fire –_

_Annie Annie Annie no Annie it's her blood it's her blood it's hers it's hers it's hers –_

Gale falls hard to his knees and rips the towel down from the sink, presses it hard against the horizontal lines slashed in rows across her inner arm. In the other room, Noah is still screaming; in the bathroom, Annie hyperventilates on the floor, trembling in his grip as Gale tries to stop the bleeding. Gale's mind is racing as he tries to think of what to do: he can wrap her up and grab the baby; she has a phone, he can call the hospital; he can carry them both, he thinks, he can carry them both to safety.

"Why did you do it?" he asks, not expecting an answer. Annie's breath comes in hard, uneasy gasps, slowly moving back to normal as the panic recedes. "Annie, you're safe, nothing can hurt you. It's not _real_, Annie, it's all in your head, it's not real."

Annie shakes her head. Her palm rasps against the stubble on his cheek as she reaches out to cup his face in her hand, forcing him to look her in the eyes. "I know, Gale," she says, and although her voice hitches, there are no more tears. "I know it's not. But this _is_."

**…**

Mrs. Everdeen stitches her fixed and Gale watches from a safe distance as Annie Cresta walks, fully-dressed, into the ocean.

Annie has hitched up her dress and wades into the water, Noah in her arms, and Gale sits barefoot on the beach behind them, watching as the waves crash up around her knees, spraying her and her son with saltwater. Noah laughs when the water hits him, chubby fists grasping at the air, and Annie pauses. The hem of her dress is wet, caught in the last rush of a wave toward the shore, and Gale leans forward, elbows on his knees, as he watches Annie carefully lean forward, dipping Noah past the surface of the water.

Noah laughs again, a sweet baby laugh, splashing and kicking, Annie's hands clasped firmly around his waist. His eyes are wide and green and wondering. Everyone thinks he looks like Finnick, but in moments like this, Gale can't help but think he'll grow up to look like his mother. Annie goes out deeper, up to her waist, her skirt billowing out around her like a sea anemone. She is talking softly to the baby in her arms, her voice lost in the sound of the water, and she bends to kiss the top of his head.

Gale is not a good swimmer; Katniss told him about her father, once, those picnics deep in the woods, the hidden pond where he taught her and Prim how to swim. Gale can dog-paddle and not drown, which is as much as he feels he needs to know, and for the longest time could not understand why Annie, who treaded water for three days in her Arena before the Gamemakers deigned to send the hovercraft to bring her out, can stand to still be near it. The ocean that surrounds Four is deep and wild beyond the shallows at the Victor's Village, and there are undertows and sharp currents and deadly, powerful waves, a million ways to die choking on saltwater, caught in terrible, heavy storms.

Noah laughs and splashes and it pulls Gale from his thoughts, draws him back to watching Annie as she turns calmly back toward the shore, her expression distant and dreamy. She smiles at him carefully when she catches his eye, and Gale, slowly, smiles back.

**…**

Mrs. Everdeen comes to Annie's after her shift at the hospital, and she catches Gale just as he is leaving. "Sit a spell," she says, gesturing to the porch swing, and Gale hesitates but ultimately obeys, taking the seat beside her without a word. It's a beautiful night: the sky dark and full of stars, reflecting on the water so that it looks like there are two skies, one on top of the other, infinite and huge. Upstairs, the light in Annie's window shuts off, and Gale listens to the night sounds with Mrs. Everdeen, acutely aware of his breathing, his movements, the nearness of her body to his. He has never been alone with her like this before – not before the war, not in Thirteen, not even since he came to Four. Annie is always between them, setting the pace, guiding the conversation, and it's unbearably odd to Gale to be treated like an adult by Katniss's mother, to be treated like an equal. She told him once that he didn't have to call her "Mrs. Everdeen," that he could call her "Lark," if he wanted, but Gale still can't do it.

"You know, they told me, after," she says, breaking the silence that has pooled between them. "How it happened in the Capitol, at the gates. With Prim."

Gale swallows hard and his heart sinks hard in his chest. Mrs. Everdeen doesn't talk about her daughters – or, he amends, she does not talk about her daughters with _him_. Gale balls his hands into fists on his knees, shame running down his spine in slow, creeping tendrils. Here she will say the truth, he thinks: _I blame you_, _this is your fault_, _Katniss was right to leave_.

"They told me how she ran in with the medical team," she continues, "And how she tried to help the children before the bombs fell. She had my look, but the rest of her…" She trails off, smiling slightly. "That was all Osten. He would have done the same thing – run to the children, tried to get them to safety. He _did_ the same thing, down in the mine, and I lost him, too."

Mrs. Everdeen turns to face him and to Gale's surprise, her eyes are wet with tears.

"I should have volunteered," he says before he can stop himself, "It should have been _me_ in there with her – it would have been different, if it was the two of us. It would have _been_ better."

Mrs. Everdeen dabs at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, and Gale feels the unshed tears melting into his skin when she reaches out to grasp his hands. "Gale," she says, her voice as gentle as it is with Annie, "This was always going to happen. It wouldn't have changed anything at all."

She lifts a hand to his face and brushes his hair back, then leans forward, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. It reminds him of his mother, of childhood, of home. Mrs. Everdeen rises from her chair with a sigh and turns to go inside. "Good night, Gale," is all she says, one hand on the door.

"Good night, Lark," he replies, and she leaves him alone with the stars.

**…**

"When I was younger, I told my mother I wanted to be married to the ocean."

They are sitting on the back steps of her clapboard house, looking out at the water. Noah is inside with Mrs. Everdeen, asleep in his cradle. There's a moment where Gale thinks that maybe this is her starting to slip away again, but when he meets her gaze her eyes are clear and focused.

"The fishermen say that, sometimes," Annie says, "Women make good wives, but their lives, their loves, their ladies, it's all the sea. I used to think it would be easier to love something bigger than me – to love something I could never lose."

Gale glances out at the ocean, the sun dipping red and gold at the horizon, and does not know what to say. The sky will soon turn dark and the water will, too; at night, in Four, the ocean is nothing but a vast, endless void, black water that swallows everything it touches – light, people, ships at sea. The woods of Twelve were dark and deep but there was safety, there, a sense of sympathetic direction in wandering off-path, of losing oneself in the long green wilderness. Gale could never love something that empty, that indifferent. Gale could never love the water.

Annie glances at him from the corner of her eye, then wordlessly rises from the steps and sheds her cardigan, her shoes. It isn't until she's peeling her dress off over her head that Gale realizes what she's doing.

"Come on, then," she says to him, not turning around as she walks down to the water.

It takes a moment, but Gale follows as if in a trance; he leaves his shoes on the sand and rolls up his pants, wading out to his knees as Annie dives underneath the surface. She moves in long, fluid strokes, her hair floating in a dark halo around her head as she swims out deeper, drawing him in after her like a mermaid, like a siren. Gale unbuttons his shirt and tosses it back towards the shore, waves catching the hems of his trousers as he follows Annie's path, watching as she dips and turns and disappears again, her body sinuous and strange as it moves effortlessly through the water.

She comes up sparkling, the droplets on her skin catching the light of the setting sun, and for the first time, Gale thinks he understands why Annie is unafraid of the ocean.

**…**

He finds her laid out on the floor the next night, curled into the fetal position on the rug with her hands clamped hard over her ears, tears streaming down her cheeks. The gashes on her wrists, still red and healing, seem worse somehow in this moment, harsh and angry in the low light of her bedroom. The baby is sleeping and Gale is at a loss.

_"Don't!"_ Annie howls as he moves closer, "Don't you dare, don't you _dare_ – they cut – they hurt – leave me _alone!_"

Gale says her name, softly, carefully, and drops to his knees. Annie jolts upright and stares at him like he is a monster.

"Go _away!_" she screams, and batters her fists against his chest, his shoulders, his face, hitting and scratching at whatever she can reach. Gale struggles but manages to get his arms around her, holding her tight to him the same way she does with Noah, the way he's done since he came here. Gale presses her face against his shoulder, strokes back her hair, and he doesn't know how long it takes, but eventually Annie stops fighting. Her cries subside as she goes limp in his arms, her eyes closed, her breath coming out in heavy pants. Gale scoops her up into his arms and lays her on top of the quilt on her bed. Annie's eyes stay shut as he turns to leave, but just as he moves to turn off the light Annie reaches out and catches his wrist in her hand, holding him still, keeping him there.

_"Don't,"_ she says, voice quiet and hoarse, "Don't go. Not yet. Don't go."

Gale can't speak. He lays down beside her and listens to her breathing as it slows and steadies, falling into rhythm with the distant sound of waves crashing against the shore. Her fingers are still closed around his wrist, her grip loosened with sleep, but Gale does not break her hold. He settles in and when he closes his eyes, it feels like the calm after a storm. It feels like peace.

**…**

The District is rebuilt. President Paylor calls him back to Two, and Gale is Panem's man through and through. He leaves on the next train; he does what is best for his country, he does what he is told. Annie and Mrs. Everdeen see him off at the station and Gale watches them from the window as the platform disappears into the distance, the two of them falling further and further behind until there is nothing left of Four at all. He and Annie write, for a time, but even that fades away; they now send only brief, perfunctory letters at the New Year, a photograph of Noah, standing tall and proud at the prow of a fishing boat, exchanged for one of Gale and his wife and son and daughters.

In the years that pass, Gale does not go back to District Twelve. He never sees Katniss Everdeen again; he never revisits the woods where he used to roam and hunt and love.

But he catches himself, sometimes, dreaming of the sea.


End file.
